


Cold As Ice (With No Sign Of Life)

by PastelClark



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blue has Issues and Lance has Issues and those issues are Compounding, Communication Issues, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, Nonverbal Communication, Original Lion Placements, Pre-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-07 14:45:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12235005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelClark/pseuds/PastelClark
Summary: It is a dark, terrible thing that only crawls to the surface, like frost over metal, when she is alone. When she feels her paladin go with one of her siblings somewhere far away enough that her hold over the bond fuzzes and fades out, flat-lining into the barest of sensations, and she is left with only herself.And she must be broken, she decides, to feel this way—because she is a leg, meant to be stable and secure andstrong, as she has known from the beginning of her creation.Legs do not get paranoid, or frightened, or…or lonely.But she does. When her paladin leaves, the cold sets in. And the cold, it is nothing but lonely.





	Cold As Ice (With No Sign Of Life)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Noise - Platonic VLD Week Day #3](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10020386) by [hufflepirate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate). 



> Written for hufflepirate for the [VLD Fanfic Remix](https://vldfanficremix2017.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr--Remixed from their fic "[The Noise](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10020386)".
> 
> I probably wildly misinterpreted the original piece, but I'm a known hoe for lion POV angst, and the idea of Blue having the same insecurity and loneliness issues as Lance is one I love, so I really wanted to do my own spin on the concept as presented in the original fic, with just a few liberties taken here and there.
> 
> I blasted Cage the Elephant's [Cold Cold Cold](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehm2SUYQbQI) almost exclusively while working on this, so the title's a nod to that. It's very much a Lance (and Blue, by proxy) song to me, so it felt appropriate.

Blue hates the cold.

 

Well, theoretically, at least. It’s not as if she and her siblings are really equipped to _feel_ temperature in the same way beings of flesh are, their closest approximation to the sensations stolen in fleeting echoes from the experiences of their paladins. The concept of wind-nipped fingers and foggy breath and all the things supplied to her by the bond are largely lost to her, for the most part.

 

No, Blue does not know the cold as her paladin does, but it is that _feeling_ —the one that lodges somewhere between her gears and underneath her armor, heavy and dense, like a ball of ice—she decides must be like cold, that she hates.

 

It is a dark, terrible thing that only crawls to the surface, like frost over metal, when she is alone. When she feels her paladin go with one of her siblings somewhere far away enough that her hold over the bond fuzzes and fades out, flat-lining into the barest of sensations, and she is left with only herself.

 

Rarely does he get far away enough that she cannot feel him at all, but her hold over the bond has never been as strong as some of her siblings, and the mere knowledge that he is distanced enough that he could blink out of her existence at a moment’s notice is…well, as her paladin might put it, it’s scary.

 

And she must be broken, she decides, to feel this way—because she is a leg, meant to be stable and secure and _strong_ , as she has known from the beginning of her creation.

 

Legs do not get paranoid, or frightened, or…or lonely.

 

But she does. When her paladin leaves, the cold sets in. And the cold, it is nothing but lonely.

 

…She hates it so. Never was she a creature built for hate, even for their enemies, so much as pity and a wish to repair what has been broken, but this—where there is no enemy to defeat but her own weakness—she can.

 

It never used to be like this, before. The ice set in over those ten thousand years, coating her during her restless, half-slumbering waiting. Ten thousand years of knowing everything as it once was has ended, her paladin along with it, and she could do nothing to stop it.

 

Until she’d laid eyes on her boy, her new paladin, and she had _known—_ and the loneliness began to lessen.

 

He’s not quite unlike her former paladin, who’d held the confidence and sureness of a king in his every step, but not so far removed either. A little broken in his own way, but at least it makes them a suited pair, if nothing else.

 

Her paladin is lonely, too. Lost and flailing in the silence of the Altean castle of ghosts and forgotten things. She can feel it in the bond, ice creeping in on both sides when his doubts get the better of him. Which is why the fact that he leaves her so frequently make so little sense to her.

 

Surely, if he understood, he would not stray where she could not follow so often?

 

Perhaps he is not as afraid of the cold as she is.

 

Sometimes, she wishes she could burrow into that strange, impossible little head of his, beyond the bond and into the darkest corners of his mind. Pick over the nuances of the ways in which he thinks, behaves, acts, down to each subconscious impulse and firing neuron. Maybe then she would understand how to convey her thoughts to him in a way he could comprehend.

 

Mortals. They’re so brilliant, so quick and all over the place. Burning bright against the vast darkness of the universe.

 

How could she, a creature born of stardust as a gift from the cosmos, one whom slumbered for millennia in a bed of ice with only her own cold for company, ever hope to hold herself to them?

 

She and her siblings may be eternal, powerful beyond most imaginings, but mortals were the ones who shaped them, that gave them these forms. Mortals restructured them, gave them new purpose—dare she even say tamed them, in a sense.

 

Perhaps their paladins need Voltron, but they, the collective pieces of it, would be nothing without their paladins, either.

 

Without the paladins, they are on their own. And then the cold sets in.

 

It is a fact Blue is more than aware of—and that, _that_ is what truly terrifies her. There are to far many possibilities, when her paladin leaves. A thousand ways he might never come back. What if he died out there, just far away enough that she could not come to his aide in time, or was captured, or simply…vanished?

 

…What if one of those times he left, he decided he preferred one of her siblings to herself?

 

Blue could hardly blame him, if that was the case. She’d be the first to admit she’s hardly the most appealing in terms of capabilities when compared to her siblings. Red chased her paladin down across the galaxies to protect him, Black shook off the hold of their former paladin to protect their new one, and Green and Yellow serve their positions in Voltron admirably and with care for their paladins. Red is fire and passion, Green is growth and ingenuity, Yellow is strength and stubbornness, and Black is grace and devotion.

 

And Blue—she is frostbite on her paladin’s fingers, surely. Why else would he leave? Why else did her _first_ paladin leave?

 

He’s a sweet-talker, her paladin. Just like the previous one. Calls her _sweetheart_ and _gorgeous_ and _baby_ when he wants something—access to a new weapon, a boost to win a race, her forgiveness when he feels he’s wronged her—but mostly, he does it because he knows she likes it. It’s flattery for flattery’s sake, but honest, well-meaning flattery. She might not understand it the same way one of his own kind would, but the intention translates over well enough, especially given this is a common habit between her paladins.

 

The other one had been that way too, knew how to twist his words sweetly to diffuse situations and get what he needed out of the reluctant. Coax the most serious to abandon and laughter.

 

He’d used those same sweet words on her, as both request and promise, time and time again.

 

_Would you, sugar?_

_Can you, beautiful?_

 

_Please, baby?_

Up until the end, when he’d taken her to that then-primitive planet, Earth, and had hidden her, under the red paladin’s orders to scatter Voltron. Had leaned forward after she reluctantly brought her particular barrier up, whispered to her to _please wait here, darling. I’ll come back to get you soon._ And she’d believed him.

 

She’d _believed_ him, yet that wasn’t enough to get him to return to her.

 

The fault is not entirely his own, she knows. Whatever had happened to him—to _all_ of them—in that final stand between the remaining paladins and Black’s former one, had ended in a fate worse than death. He could not have come back, even if he wished to.

 

But still, the knowledge had settled in over those many years of waiting, long after she’d felt the bond shatter and the frost began to form under her armor and between her plates, down into her core. He had known. He had known he was walking into the end of it all, that he would never be able to come back for her as promised, and had hidden that from her.

 

Even with the strength of their bond, she could not reach far enough to sense those hidden thoughts. It hadn’t been enough. _She_ hadn’t been enough.

 

 

She had lost him, because she was not strong enough to realize what was happening and save her daft, brave, _glorious_ paladin from his own destruction, and she could just as easily lose this one, too. What would stop him from lying to her, as well? Promises mean nothing when dealing with foolhardy, self-sacrificing paladins, even when breathed on soft, flattering words.

 

Any time he leaves could be the final time. When he is stolen away, or tempted by better things, or hides his true intentions from her under some foolish semblance of greater good.

 

It weighs heavy on her every time he departs. Every time the bond grows taught and thin, the sensations frayed, and she feels the promise of the ice on her back. If he leaves, _really_ leaves, she will be alone again.

 

Blue does not know if a creature such as herself can die, but she thinks if anything would kill her, it would be that. The loneliness. It hasn’t even occurred, and yet she mourns its eventuality.

 

After one of those times when he leaves the castle with one of her siblings, blinking out from her conscious to the faintest glimmer, he comes to her with shuffling feet and cautious eyes. His own anxiety pings along the bond, and it tears her apart, because she never wanted him to be as she is—and yet he must be, because paladins are always a reflection of their lions.

 

Or perhaps it is the other way around. Would it matter, either way?

 

"You know I'd never leave you on purpose, right? You know that?" he speaks to her in that tiny, overwhelming voice of his, and she feels the frost between her joints. No, she doesn’t know that. Can’t possibly be sure of that. He speaks to her in those sugar-coated loving words she treasures, yet fears, and she doesn’t know how to explain, to give to him the comprehension of ten thousand years of that fearful aloneness.

 

And then he asks her. To take all he has to offer, beyond the bond and into his heart, in order to know his truth. Her former paladin had never offered such a thing, and she accepts it hesitantly. She slips into the recesses of his mind, and she finds no lie. He would not leave her, would _never_ leave her, if given the choice.

 

There are cracks, because he is a little bit broken, just like her, but that is all right. Two broken things can yet make a whole. There is no ice here, only the warmth of his planet’s summer rains, and it brings her comfort.

 

_I just wanna know you know how I feel._

 

He reaches out to her, with those warm waters and all that well-intentioned _good_ , and she accepts, going to him as she did her first paladin all those millennia ago, when he gave her the promise of that one lie. She believed then, and despite it all, she wants to believe now.

 

Blue does not understand him completely, her little, excitable, bright paladin. But stars above, she wants to.

 

Perhaps that is enough. Perhaps the ice can thaw yet.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [10/1/17, 4:49:29 PM] it's halloween: awww adorable  
> [10/1/17, 4:50:07 PM] H.P. Clark: Theirs is adorable mines just like “hello and welcome to blue having a fucking mid-life crisis”  
> [10/1/17, 4:53:16 PM] it's halloween: jesus i have goosebumps now bc yours keeps mentioning how cold it is dkfjsjfskdjfs  
> [10/1/17, 4:53:29 PM] H.P. Clark: i ran out of creative wording tbh  
> [10/1/17, 4:53:42 PM] H.P. Clark: “It’s cold” “….it’s cold” “yeah, sure is cold”
> 
> Tumblr: [pastel-clark](http://pastel-clark.tumblr.com)
> 
> Twitter: [hpClarkster](http://www.twitter.com/hpClarkster)


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